It’s time to marinate…olives that is

At the end of April I preserved a bucketful of wonderful black olives gratefully received from my Step-mother. Over the last six weeks they have been quietly transforming in my dark pantry from unpalatable bitterness in to edible salty fruits. The process of making the raw olives palatable was relatively painless in the end and now it was time to marinate them (check out my post on how to preserve olives in brine here). I’ve decided on two different marinades as I did end up with 1.5kg (3.5 lb), so a little bit of variety was a good idea.

Ingredients

Before marinating the olives, I drained the brine and rinsed the olives thoroughly in water. I then laid them out on the kitchen bench and dried them with paper towels.

Garlic and Mixed Herb Olives

750g black brined olives

8 cloves of garlic, crushed

6 bay leaves, fresh or dried

2 sprigs of rosemary, fresh or dried

1 small bunch of parsley, roughly chopped

1 tblsp dried mixed herbs

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

Approximately 1L good quality olive oil

In a large mixing bowl, I added the olives, garlic, herbs and red wine vinegar and 1/2 cup of the olive oil. After mixing everything together, I filled clean jars to about three-quarters and poured over the rest of the olive oil to completely cover the olives. On went the lids and in to the pantry for another week before tasting.

Garlic and mixed herb olivesReady for the pantry

Lemon and Thyme Olives

750g brined black olives

Zest, peel and juice from 1 lemon (I used 2 lemons, one to zest and one to peel and juice)

Small handful of fresh thyme (probably 1 tblsp dried)

Small handful of fresh lemon thyme (probably 1 tblsp dried)

1 tsp fennel seeds

Approximately 1L good quality olive oil

Follow the same method above and try and wait the one week before sampling them! I must admit to eating a few as soon as they were mixed…I couldn’t resist.

Lemon and thyme olivesReady for the pantry

Marinating olives is really easy to do. You definitely don’t need to prepare your own raw olives in brine for six weeks. Simply buy a large jar of olives in brine and make your own marinades from whatever flavours you fancy.